An organ donation provision, part of the Labor, Health and Human Service Funding Bill, passed 30-21 this afternoon in the U.S. House Appropriations Committee.
Rep. Kevin Yoder, R-3rd Dist., worked to include a provision in the bill directing the Secretary of Health and Human Services to establish a coordinated initiative to increase the number of organ donations in the United States.
Last year, Yoder spearheaded a letter along with more than 50 of his colleagues to Administrator Mary Wakefield at the Health Resources and Services Administration to express concerns regarding a concept paper released by the United Network for Organ Sharing Liver and Intestine Committee.
The proposed concept paper would have changed the rules governing the allocation of livers for transplant. Under these proposed changes from UNOS, the geographic boundaries for sharing of donor livers would have been significantly broadened with the goal of redistributing organs from the Midwest to the coasts, which many believed would actually reduce local organ donations and have the impact of reducing organ donations nationwide.
“Kansans, and the Midwest as a whole, are traditionally generous when it comes to organ donation,” Yoder said. “As policymakers, we need to work towards raising the donor consent rates around the nation to levels that we see in the Midwest and beyond.
“We need to move away from policies that resemble shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic. Instead, we should be removing disincentives to organ donation, improving promotion and education regarding living organ donation, developing better donor registries, and encouraging collaboration between government and private sector groups, in order to improve and save more lives.
“The provision included in today’s bill is a good first step towards promoting and implementing these principles. I look forward to working with my colleagues in the House of Representatives to ensure this provision remains in the bill during consideration on the House floor and urge my colleagues in the Senate to push for similar language as they continue the Appropriations process.”